Category Archive

His lives are up. It’s a century-old debate: what is the meaning of the wave function, the central object of quantum mechanics? Is Schrödinger’s cat really dead and alive? I was recently involved in an experimentconducted by Andrew White’s Quantum Technology Lab at the University of Queensland that has now provided the most significant evidence on that question in years. And it doesn’t look good … Read More

Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once. The widely accepted age of the universe, as estimated by general relativity, is 13.8 billion years. … Read More

They’ve finally solved it. It’s one of quantum mechanics’ most elusive concepts, ever since Erwin Schrödinger crafted the famous “Schrödinger’s cat” thought experiment. In the current experiment, led by Martin Ringbauer of the University of Queensland, photons seem to genuinely exist in multiple states until they’re measured. There’s still wriggle-room in their result, reported in Nature Physics here (Arxiv pre-print in full here), since … Read More

Here’s a nice sur­prise: quan­tum phys­ics is less com­pli­cat­ed than we thought, ac­cord­ing to new re­search. The work links two strange fea­tures of the quan­tum world—or na­ture at the small­est scales, such as that of sub­a­tom­ic par­t­i­cles—call­ing them dif­fer­ent man­i­festa­t­ions of the same thing. Quan­tum phys­ics says that par­t­i­cles can be­have like waves, and vi­ce versa. Re­search­ers have now con­clud­ed … Read More